Sixty-one members of the Southeast Asian nation’s Communist Party, including a former ambassador to Beijing, urged in an open letter that the leadership “develop a truly democratic, law-abiding state,” allow for greater freedom of political speech and “escape” from its reliance on China.

[…] “The Party needs to get rid of Marxism-Leninism and get out of China’s orbit,” Chu Hao, former vice minister of science and technology and one of the letter’s three co-authors, said in a phone interview. “It is very high time for the party to make a thorough transformation.”

[…] “If Vietnam were to decide the strategic future of Vietnam requires a political opening to the West akin to what Myanmar has passed through in the past three, four years, a genuine opening up – not full democracy – if Vietnam were to do something like that, it would be an enormous strategic loss for China,” [Rand Corp.’s Scott] Harold said. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/vietnamese-communists-call-political-change/feed/0China Plans Rail Extension to India Through Tibethttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/07/china-plans-extension-railroad-india-tibet/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/07/china-plans-extension-railroad-india-tibet/#commentsSat, 26 Jul 2014 18:27:22 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=175566According to a state media report, China plans to construct two railway lines in Tibet that will extend up to the borders of India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The railroads are expected to be completed by 2020. Edward Wong at The New York Times reports:

China plans to extend by 2020 a railroad on the high trans-Himalayan plateau of Tibet to the borders of India, Bhutan and Nepal, according to a report in People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

The extension would lengthen a 157-mile rail route that is expected to open next month from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, to Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, a revered spiritual leader. In 2006, China opened the first railway to Tibet, linking Lhasa to China via the province of Qinghai.

The planned lengthening was criticized by Tibet advocates who said it would bring too many ethnic Han migrants to Lhasa and other Tibetan areas. The Wednesday report in People’s Daily cited Yang Yulin, deputy head of the railways administration in Tibet, saying that two additional rail lines would be added from Shigatse — one to Yadong, a point near the Indian and Bhutan borders, and one to Jilong, an area near the border with Nepal. [Source]

A $20-billion Burmese railroad project that would link the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal was cancelled this week due to fears over the project’s environment impact and objections from the public. It was the latest backlash to China’s attempt to expand its influence in its “near abroad” of southeast Asia.

The railway between Burmese city of Kyaukpyu and the Chinese city of Kunming was supposed to follow the gas and oil pipelines (the former is operational, the latter almost finished) that have been the target of widespread protests by Burmese who are outraged that a country largely without electric power is shipping its natural resources to China.

Civil society groups in Burma have long protested the Sino-Burmese railway, with groups in the country’s Rakhine state saying it was one of 10 major infrastructure projects—including the China gas pipeline, major mining works, and hydropower projects—that were granted without the approval of local people who would be affected. Under a memorandum of understanding that has now expired, China was to finance most of the cost of the railroad in exchange for a 50-year concession to operate it.

“This is because we care about the people’s desires. Most people view the project as having more disadvantages than advantages,” a Burmese official told German press agency DPA. [Source]

But Beijing’s ties with the former military junta haunt its current dealings. Few have forgotten that China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, vetoed a resolution calling for an end to repression in Myanmar in 2007.

[…] The South China Morning Post revisits the Southeast Asian nation, investigating the enduring links between Myanmar and the giant next door. […] [Source]

Click through for the entire four-part multimedia feature, which explores how ethnic Chinese traders are cashing in on Myanmar’s new economy, opposition to a state-owned Chinese company’s plans to dam an area that would dislocate thousands, the role a Chinese-backed copper mine has played in dividing Myanmar’s opposition party, and how local reporters have been punished for looking into chemical weapons allegedly produced with help from China.

In 2002, the KIO banned commercial logging in its territory and began to depend on the “taxes” levied from gold, jade smuggling, and to a lesser extent timber trafficking, he said.

Nevertheless, conservationists say that this year timber trafficking to China is at an all-time high.

“These days the illegal timber trade is happening because the Chinese businessmen log in [lowland] Burma and transport through our territory,” explained Yaw Ding, assistant director of the KIO’s economic department in Laiza. “So we just get tax.”

[…] Research by National Geographic during a ten-day trip to the area in late April 2014 supports the KIA’s claim that the timber now entering China wasn’t logged in its upland enclave. Rather, the golden teak, rosewood, and other hardwoods are felled in the Sagaing Region in northwestern Myanmar, home to some of Southeast Asia’s last remaining forests.

[…] Zau Tawng added, “As long as the political unrest exists in the country, the illegal trade will continue because they don’t have any rule of law.” [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/timber-trafficking-myanmar-china-rise/feed/0From Myanmar, on Media Freedom and Responsibilityhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/myanmar-media-freedom-responsibility/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/myanmar-media-freedom-responsibility/#commentsTue, 18 Mar 2014 04:40:18 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=170420At China Media Project, Qian Gang reflects on recent relaxations of media controls in Myanmar that have inspired envy among Chinese journalists, and on Aung San Suu Kyi’s warning that the press must “be aware not just of its great power and influence, but of the great responsibility that it bears.”

Freedom and responsibility are both essential to the media. But the situation in China with respect to freedom of speech lags so far behind that of Myanmar, and the circumstances journalists in either country face are so different.

In China, media are subjected to stringent controls. The ideals of freedom of speech and freedom of expression enshrined in Article 35 of the Constitution have in actual fact become a mockery. On the one hand, the Chinese Communist Party bitterly attacks the notion of freedom of speech, and on the other it shouts at the top of its voice about “the responsibility of the media.” In China, “responsibility” is much more than official-ese filling one’s ears — it is a weapon with which the government beats the media down.

[…] During my visit to Myanmar, I puzzled again over these two issues — freedom and responsibility. In my view, freedom and responsibility are difficult to separate. The media’s responsibility (媒体责任) is a pledge made to society and the public by those in the media. It is not a “responsibility” on the part of shackled media to serve as tools of power. The media’s responsibility is the responsibility of those who have freedom, and the responsibility of those who seek it. In the process of pursuing freedom, we cannot abandon our sense of responsibility. And there is an implicit danger in the idea that we must first seek freedom and only afterwards uphold responsibility (先自由，後责任). [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/03/myanmar-media-freedom-responsibility/feed/0A Border City on the Edge of the Lawhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/border-city-edge-law/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/02/border-city-edge-law/#commentsTue, 25 Feb 2014 19:19:44 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=169526The New York Times’ Andrew Jacobs visits the Chinese-dominated Myanmar border town of Mong La, “a neon spaceship that crash-landed in the jungle” and now hosts fugitives, gambling, prostitution, and wildlife trafficking.

The smuggling route into this rebel-run jungle outpost just over the Chinese border begins on the back of a motorcycle that takes passengers through steeply terraced rubber plantations, and skirts the official crossing before ending at an outdoor market where bedraggled prostitutes mingle with Chinese tourists haggling over tiger claws, bear paws and desiccated squares of elephant skin.

At $14 each way, the 20-minute ride is a relative bargain, although the price does not include payoffs to teenage Burmese insurgents at impromptu checkpoints along the way.

Tucked into the verdant forests of Myanmar’s eastern Shan State, Mong La is better known here by its Chinese name, Xiaomengla, in part because the vast majority of its residents are Chinese, as are most of the illegal day-trippers, drug mules, Christian missionaries and comely young croupiers who work in the city’s 20 casinos, most of which are Chinese-owned.

Mong La has a hilltop Buddhist temple and a picturesque colonial church, but vice and self-indulgence, not sightseeing, are the city’s main draws. “There’s not much to do here but gamble and eat wild animals,” one Chinese matron said with a jaded sigh. [Source]

As Foreign Correspondent returns for another season in 2013, China correspondent Stephen McDonell takes us right into the heart of the tearaway trade, on patrol with China’s drug police struggling against the tide of illicit drugs often carried by poor Myanmar mules prepared to risk everything for a couple of hundred dollars.

McDonell and cameraman Wayne McAllister slip across the porous border to observe the trade from its source, head into newly-afflicted communities where heroin and amphetamine use is metastasising and then head to the super-cities like Shanghai where, unlike previous generations, China’s partying young are driving a booming market in so-called recreational drugs.

One credible report estimates the number of registered drug addicts has grown from 70,000 in 1990 to nearly 2 million a year or so ago. The number of regular drug users may be as high as 12 million. It’s a massive new market for the drug dealers of Myanmar and beyond and if it continues to grow exponentially, it’s a social, health and legal time bomb for Chinese authorities. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/08/the-other-china-boom/feed/0China Set to Become Largest Net Oil Importerhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/08/china-set-to-become-largest-net-oil-importer/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/08/china-set-to-become-largest-net-oil-importer/#commentsTue, 13 Aug 2013 08:22:55 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=161444The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that China is likely to become the world’s largest net oil importer as soon as October:

The imminent emergence of China as the world’s largest net oil importer has been driven by steady growth in Chinese demand, increased oil production in the United States, and a flat level of demand for oil in the U.S. market.

[…] Looking beyond 2014, higher U.S. oil production and stagnant or declining U.S. oil consumption, coupled with China’s projected strong oil demand growth and slow oil production growth, suggest that once China replaces the United States as the world’s largest net oil importer, the gap between net oil imports in China and the United States will grow.

Analyst Amrita Sen told the BBC that the U.S. remains by some distance the largest importer overall, but that its diesel and petroleum exports offset this on a net basis. Even so, she added, “because of the growth in China and in India, everybody’s diverting their attention … which does mean that if for whatever reason shale doesn’t work out, much like Europe which is really facing a dearth of crude supplies, America might be in a similar situation where because everybody’s now focused towards giving fuel to Asia, there isn’t that many exporters coming into the U.S..”

China now imports around 60 percent of its oil consumption, but the US reliance on foreign oil is declining – less than 50 percent at present according to media reports, as its domestic production of shale oil, tight oil and other alternative energy such as shale gas is increasing.

“It is only a matter of time for China to surpass the US in net oil imports. The most important thing is to find solutions because as the largest oil importer China will be very vulnerable to oil price changes,” said Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University.

The US has played an important role in stabilizing global oil prices and also maintaining order in major oil producing countries. However, the US will be less motivated to do so with less reliance on imported oil, experts said.

Lin noted that at present China is still not capable of playing such a major role and the only thing it can do now is to save energy as well as diversify oil sources to guarantee energy security. [Source]

According to Ma Jun, IPE’s founder, “There isn’t any proof of public participation in the EIA report or its appendix … Also, the conclusion section of the report lacks a summary of public attitudes towards the project.”

The current temporary regulation for public participation in environmental impact assessment requires all EIA reports to include sections on public participation. Green Watershed’s director Yu Xiaogang said that the lack of this section means the approval given by the Ministry of Environmental Protection does not accord with the existing regulation. “Therefore, approval should be revoked,” he said.

[…] Though the release of the EIA report itself could be seen as progress – a government official said in May that the EIA report of the refinery project was listed as an official secret – environmentalists were unimpressed.

“Given the great public environmental interest in this project, PetroChina’s Kunming refinery has disclosed very limited information at this early stage,” said Li Bo from Friends of Nature. [Source]

“What I don’t completely understand,” he writes, “is why industry and local government would sneak around keeping a project so harmless and so very significant to the national economy under wraps. […] They must come to realize that what incites public suspicion, panic and opposition is not necessarily a particular project’s ‘toxicity’, but policymakers’ irregular and ‘demonizing’ conduct. However good a project is, procedural irregularities will inevitably bring about ‘demonization,’ placing obstacles in its path. If only things are managed publicly, transparently, legally, and with respect for locals’ rights, people will be able to resolve these issues in a regular and rational way.”

With Thein Sein’s elected government replacing the military junta and Aung San Suu Kyi freed, China is facing new problems in Myanmar. The change of government has seen repeated setbacks at two of its major projects, the Myitsone dam and the Letpadaung copper mine. The other major project is the oil and gas pipelines, strongly opposed by locals and NGOs since the start, but which were built with the support of the old junta.

[…] French oil giant Total similarly encountered opposition when building a gas pipeline to Thailand in the ocean south of Rangoon – locals and NGOs resisted the project. Total set up a public relations office dedicated to maintaining its image locally, and has continued that work for more than a decade. Jiang Heng, a researcher with the Ministry of Commerce’s Transnationals Research Institute, explained: “How detailed are an international oil firm’s evaluations of potential conflict? How often do demonstrations happen locally? How often are roads blocked? What is the history and status quo of conflict between the different stakeholders and between different projects? There will be a systematic evaluation of these prior to investment, and real-time monitoring during operation. It’s all quite scientific.” But Chinese firms fail almost completely to do this.

[…] “For a long time we just worried about government licenses, we didn’t care about a ‘social license’ from civil society. That meant huge losses, and Chinese firms should realise that,” said Jiang Heng. [Source]

The trip follows a visit to Brazil by US Vice-President Joe Biden, which raised concerns that China and the US are competing for influence in the region.

But mainland experts said Beijing was well aware that Washington perceived Latin America as its “backyard” and would proceed cautiously.

Dong Jingsheng , an expert on Latin American affairs expert at Peking University, said: “China will not let Sino-US ties be affected by Latin America.”

Xi is expected to focus on economic issues and boosting China’s image in the region.

It is estimated that China committed more than US$86 billion in loans to Latin American countries between 2005 and last year, exceeding amounts from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. [Source]

“As more left-wing parties have come to power in the region, Latin American countries are tending to distance themselves from the US. They now pursue diversity in foreign relations and exhibit their independence,” [He Shuangrong, CASS researcher] said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent reference to Latin America as Washington’s “backyard” evoked strong emotions in the region, with Bolivia expelling a US development agency in protest.

“China’s expanding ties with Latin America are purely about the economy and trade, not political reasons,” said Xu. [Source]

Recently two “backyards” have been constantly mentioned by the media. One is China’s backyard, Myanmar and the other is that of the US, Latin America. While the US gets into China’s backyard, China does the same to the US.

[…]The concept of backyard comes with strong Cold War connotations. The world can hardly be divided by regions of big powers’ influence any more. The group competition of the Cold War era has lost its foundation. An integrated world is inevitable.

[…]Latin American and Southeast Asian countries have been undergoing rapid development. They need investment as well as expanding exports and promoting basic infrastructures. As China becomes more powerful, it can do more to seek a win-win situation. Meanwhile, the increasing investment of the US will be bound to be welcomed. Both regions are expecting more investment and more open markets from the US.

In the past two years, Americans have often stressed rebalancing. The best rebalancing could be that the competition between China and the US will result in their increasing investment in Latin America and Myanmar, which will boost trade relations.

For China, the arrest was a substantial victory, said Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of South East Asian Affairs at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and an author of the book “Cashing In Across the Golden Triangle.”

“The capture of Naw Kham sends a message that no group or state is going to be allowed to mess around with China on the Mekong River,” Mr. Chambers said. “Everyone now knows the top dog on the Mekong is China.”

In some ways, China’s operation to scoop up the drug lord echoed Gen. John J. Pershing’s endeavor to capture Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary leader who in 1916 killed 18 Americans in New Mexico, Mr. Chambers said.

What kind of weak, soft, overly legalistic government worries about trivial concerns like international law and “sovereignty issues” when it comes to drone-killing heinous murderers for whom capture is difficult? Why not just shoot Hellfire missiles wherever you think he might be hiding in weaker countries and kill him and anyone who happens to be near him? Or if you are able to find him, at least just riddle his skull with bullets, dump his corpse into the ocean, and then chant nationalistic slogans in the street and at your political conventions. Who would ever want to give a trial to such a heinous and savage foreign killer of your citizens, particularly if it means risking the lives of your soldiers to apprehend him?

[…] In contrast to the strong and just US – which not only boldly drone-kills whomever and wherever it wants without regard to irritating trivialities like sovereignty but even tried (unsuccessfully) to pressure the Afghan government to execute its accused “drug lords” with no trials – the weak and soft Chinese are actually celebrating their own impotence. As the New York Times put it in February: “‘We didn’t use China’s military, and we didn’t harm a single foreign citizen,’ Mr. Liu bragged after the arrest in April 2012.” Note the word “brag”: the Times has to infuse something negative into the success of the Chinese in avoiding killing foreign civilians and relying on law enforcement processes rather than military strikes to apprehend an elusive killer.

In reality, though, anti-China sentiment had been building for years, say foreign academics, Yangon businessmen and former military officials. That apprehension grew even within the nation’s armed forces, where officers believed Myanmar, also known as Burma, was being exploited by its giant neighbor.

As Myanmar becomes increasingly open, public protests have heightened over China’s role in its affairs. “The Chinese are still in a state of shock,” said Thuta Aung, head of Hamsa Hub, a business development firm in Yangon, also known as Rangoon. “In the past, they’d partner with the [Myanmar] military and do whatever they wanted as long as they put money under the table. Now villagers have more voice.”

Yet even as Myanmar rebalances its foreign policy, it’s unlikely to fully snub Beijing given China’s proximity, growing international clout and the nations’ historical relationship, analysts said. Though the Myitsone development was suspended, for instance, it wasn’t canceled, and numerous other Chinese oil, gas, pipeline and resource projects continue apace.

“The Burmese are very keen to get out of the embrace of the Chinese,” said Morten Pedersen, a senior lecturer with the Australian Defense Force Academy. “Myanmar was angry with the sanctions, but it was never anti-Western. They have a traditional view of autonomy and saw they were losing that.”

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/myanmar-pivots-uneasily-away-from-china/feed/0CCTV Pre-Execution Spectacle Polarizes Viewershttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/cctv-pre-execution-spectacle-polarizes-viewers/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/cctv-pre-execution-spectacle-polarizes-viewers/#commentsSat, 02 Mar 2013 01:50:29 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=152207Drug lord Naw Kham and three other foreigners were executed in Kunming on Friday for the 2011 killings of 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River. State broadcaster CCTV aired the prisoners’ final hours, together with segments on their crimes and the ensuing manhunt, as a showcase of tough justice, but some saw instead a sinister and possibly illegal echo of the Mao era. From Jonathan Kaiman at The Guardian:

Naw Kham’s wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. “I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. I have been thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don’t want my children to be like me,” the 44-year-old Burmese druglord, chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.

On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.

In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote via microblog. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

[…] In one segment, Liu Yuejin, director general of the central government’s Narcotics Control Bureau, cast the executions as a pivotal moment for a newly confident China and for ethnic Chinese across the globe. “In the past, overseas Chinese dared not say they were of Chinese origin,” said Mr. Liu, who led the task force that spent six months hunting the culprits. “Now they can hold their heads high and be themselves.”

Supporters of the program were many, and enthusiastic. One blogger suggested that death by lethal injection was too lenient, adding “These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.”

Some critics said the broadcast, and the subsequent public gloating, displayed an ugly side of China and would hurt its image abroad. To Murong Xuecun, a well-known Chinese author, the program revealed a national psyche, fed by decades of Communist Party propaganda, that craves vengeance for the years of humiliation by foreigners. “It proves that hatred-education still has a market in China,” he said in an interview.

[…] Over the last two years the Chinese government has found itself embroiled in increasingly dangerous sovereignty disputes with its Southeast Asian and Japanese neighbors. So far, diplomacy has been the preferred course of action. Yet on China’s decidedly nationalistic and highly influential microblogging platforms, diplomacy — especially on sovereignty issues — is unpopular and viewed as a sign of weakness.

In response, the Chinese government and its official media tribunals have carefully ratcheted up the aggressive rhetoric, especially toward Japan, since the fall of 2012, reminding Chinese that they will not be bullied by outside forces. Rather, if there will be any bullying, China will be doing it.

A 2012 Reuters investigation into the Mekong murders described the web of trafficking in drugs, humans and endangered animals in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle”, and Naw Kham’s legendary or perhaps mythical place in it. The report also highlighted the possible involvement of an elite Thai anti-drugs unit in the killings.

The training has been taking place in the hills of Yunnan Province. It borders Kachin State in northern Myanmar, where a civil war between an ethnic Kachin rebel army and the Burmese Army has been unfolding. The fighting intensified in late December, and Chinese officials and news organizations reported that shells had landed in China and that Kachin refugees had begun living in hotels and the homes of family and friends in Yunnan.

[…] The current round of fighting in Kachin State has centered on the town of Laiza, from which the Kachin army controls an autonomous area of the state. This winter, the Burmese Army has been pressing an offensive to capture Laiza or crucial military positions around it. The army has deployed fighter jets and heavy artillery, and residents have said civilians were killed.

[…] Chinese officials have expressed concern this winter over the violence, especially artillery shells falling within Yunnan; at least four have landed since Dec. 30. There are also worries about a potential flood of refugees.